Cosatu condemns Rath 16 - 03 - 06

 

COSATU condemns Rath

The Congress of South African Trade Unions is disgusted and appalled at Matthias Rath's newsletter 'You can! Special edition'.

Its headline screams: "TAC forces the government to spread disease and death among the people of South Africa". In a blatant contempt of court, he tries to interpret the Cape High Court judgement of 3 March - which ordered him not to stop telling such outrageous lies about the Treatment Action Campaign - as a ruling in his favour, claiming that "the judges affirmed the most devastating exposures of the TAC, including that it helps promote disease and death".

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is serious enough without being made even worse by this kind of malicious propaganda and lies. Rath is sowing widespread confusion in poor communities, where people are desperate to find any way out of the HIV/AIDS nightmare.

They are being encouraged not to use the one treatment which can prolong their lives and those of their loved ones - antiretrovirals - but instead to try Rath's quack remedies which will be a death sentence, while the proceeds line his pockets.

President Mbeki, in his State of the Nation Speech, proudly boasted that over 100 000 patients are receiving antiretroviral treatment and that, combined with patients in the private sector, South Africa has one of the largest such treatment programme in the world. In Rath's twisted view therefore surely the government is equally guilty as the TAC and is also spreading disease and death.

So we call upon the government to unequivocally condemn this charlatan and to defend its decision to promote antiretrovirals. Any hesitation to do so will only increase the confusion that Rath is spreading.

COSATU will back the TAC in any further action it decides to take to enforce the court order it won. Rath's attacks will spur us on to intensify the joint campaign that COSATU, the TAC and the SA Council of Churches have launched to roll back the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic. It will be the main theme at this year's May Day celebrations. We will do everything possible to get antiretrovirals to everyone who needs them and save and prolong thousands of lives.